Re:Tesla Virtual Power Plant
by hattmall on Wednesday August 17, 2022 @09:53PM
(#32504274)
You can get a mixing valve that's installed at the heater. Very easy, then turn the heater up really high, they are only like $15-20 and will effectively double or triple your hot water capacity.
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Re:Tesla Virtual Power Plant
by mschuster91 on Thursday August 18, 2022 @02:34AM
(#32506068)
Do not install these if you have hard water, they will clog up extremely fast - and the hotter your hot water is, the faster it will clog up.
Which is especially amusing considering this is PG&E territory. The bay area water was so hard you could make limestone castles by rinsing a glass.
Interesting, I didn't know those existed. Seems like it makes a lot of sense.
It also seems like if you simply leave it on a higher temperature 24/7 it will use more power due to thermal losses overall. This is a great hack for households with several people who like to take long showers (and thus run out of hot water), though, or if you can do some sort of variable temperature setpoint to store energy as described in the thread, though I think at least in the US electric tank-based hot water heaters are relatively uncommon.